Cornish schools can now visit the award-winning National Seal Sanctuary free of charge.

The Sanctuary´s management and animal care team has decided the conservation benefits to be gained from teaching more schoolchildren about the seal population outweigh the revenue benefits of charging for school visits.

"The more children who learn about the correct way to act when finding seals in apparent difficulties, the better the survival prospects of those seals in the future," said the sanctuary´s Rachael Vine.

"We´re even going to provide every visiting school group with an expert guide from our staff team, and lay on a choice of special talks."

Even though it will be providing future educational visit for Cornish schools free, the Sanctuary still plans to organise those visits to make them as relevant as possible to current curriculum targets.

"Our main aim is to reduce as much as possible the incidence of seals having to be rescued because of well-meaning but misguided human interference," said Rachael.

"This initiative will hopefully result in fewer such incidents in the future."

The Sanctuary´s rescue season has already started with the arrival of 5 pups over the past 4 weeks, and as many as forty or fifty more anticipated over the coming winter.